Together: Forever, This Time
by infamouschelsea
Summary: Their final chapter. They always said they would be together. *You might need a tissue before reading.*


Disclaimer: The characters in this story are those from E.L. James's 'Fifty Shades' trilogy. The author of this story does not own these characters. The story/plot of this story belongs to the author. Any similarities to persons dead or alive are purely coincidental and unintended. No copyright infringement intended.

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**This is just a one-shot story. It's unconnected to my other and currently on-going story, 'Happiness Doesn't Last For Long'.**

**This idea came to me after finishing John Green's "The Fault in Our Stars". To anyone who hasn't read it, I highly recommend it. It's a great book. **

**All and any mistakes are my own. I hope you enjoy it.**

**Much Love,**

**Chelsea x**

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I married Christian Trevelyan Grey on July 16 2011.

It was a stunningly cool Saturday, exactly one month after I had finally agreed to marry him. I can honestly say, with my feeble hand resting over my heart, that those four weeks preceding that day were the most stressful and most tiring of my life. Christian and I have had our ups and downs, there's no denying that, but it was a month full of arguments, headaches, sleeplessness and the frequent stomping of feet. Though, the latter was mainly from Ms Mia Trevelyan Grey – now Kavanagh. By the end of it all, I was tired and ready. I was ready to give up, sign my name on the dotted line and get on with the rest of my life. I was tempted to run off to Vegas and elope, simply to get away from it all.

We married shortly after noon, with the sun at its highest in the sky, in his parents' home. I've told this story a thousand times or more, but still it's never quite enough. I could spend all day describing how the room looked, the way my dress clung and fell from my body in all the right places, but today all I can think about was how Christian looked. When I close my eyes, even for a blink, I can still see him standing there, at the end of the makeshift aisle.

In all the time I have known and loved him, Christian looked nervous on only a handful of occasions: when I woke from the coma he feared would take me from him; when our son was born by emergency C-section after hours of a painful, unending struggle; and again, when our daughter was born – at home, after a short, two hour labour. He didn't know what to do. He was frantically calling for his mother to help us. Thankfully, she arrived just in time to relieve him of his post and deliver our angel to us. I understood why he was nervous on those fearful days because I was nervous, too. But, it took a long time for me to realise why he was so uncomfortable in those minutes before I met his side on July 16.

Christian was worried I wouldn't come. He feared that I would have changed my mind and refused to take that short journey to him – to our new life together. Still, after all these years, it brings a smile to my face thinking of that moment.

I was equally as scared. My biggest fear in life was that he wouldn't be there. That he wouldn't be waiting for me.

Two weeks ago I celebrated my sixty-ninth wedding anniversary. Alone.

Of course, I wasn't truly alone. I was surrounded by my son and daughter, and my five, gloriously hyper and technology controlled grandchildren.

I woke early that morning. Just before six. I wanted to be with Christian when the sun finally rose over the Sound.

I crawled out of our bed and slipped into the robe he had once worn. I commandeered it many, many years ago. I have a pile of his t-shirts, too. They still smell of him. I caught myself in the mirror after I sprinkled my face with water. I saw my mother staring back at me. My hair full of white and grey, and my eyes crowded in deep crevices. I have what they call a 'lived in' face. I always hated that phrase.

I left my reflection in the bathroom and stepped into my waiting slippers, and took the increasingly laborious walk through the house we shared for almost seventy years. We almost made it to that milestone.

When Christian died, a part of me left with him. I lost a part of myself. I lost that part that had furiously maintained the grounds of our home for the past twenty years. I lost the drive to keep our home serene and comfortable. I had lost him. I had lost my everything.

I stopped tending to the roses we planted in the backyard, during one Spring in our mid-forties. I stopped caring. I stopped everything.

It surprised me how long the grass was when I moved into the meadow that morning. It tickled my knees as I slumped my way toward the big Oak tree. The tree had been here long before we arrived, and it'll still be here long after Christian and I are just a faint memory in the mind of our youngest granddaughter, Avery.

I fell to my rather plump behind at the bottom of the tree, mingling into the dirt and twigs. We always used to go to that spot on our anniversary. We'd settled under the mass protection of the leaves overhead and hold each other. Our children would run around and play haplessly while we would reminisce. That was our little piece of heaven.

The Orange sun rose steadily above the water, and the breeze whispered sweetly around my face. That was one of the greatest things about July on the Sound. The wind was always quiet and warm, whooshing by peacefully.

There was a cold breeze when we laid Christian to rest, back in February. Our close knit family gathered around his grave, holding hands and sharing tears. He chose his plot years before, taking pride and place beside his parents and brother. My parents were sleeping nearby, too. There was a place for me, next to Christian. He wanted us to be together.

We watched as they set him down, beneath the earth. I stayed with him until he was truly gone. I stayed until they covered him and made sure he was warm, and then I knelt down next to him and prayed.

A single tear slipped from my eye and before I could wipe it away, the wind tenderly stole it.

It was Christian.

In that sweeping moment I could feel his hand on my face one last time. I heard him tell me to stop crying, that we'd be together again. I heard him laugh at me as I tried to haul myself from the ground, refusing the hand of my son.

Every day since his funeral I prayed that I would see him again. I prayed that one morning I would wake up and find him lying next to me – that I would see his religiously messed-up hair spanning off in every direction imaginable, and his smile as broad as it ever was. Luckily, for me, I didn't have to wait long before my wish came true.

Christian left me on February 9. I joined him on July 31 of the same year.

On the night of July 30 I felt exhausted and off-kilter. I felt like my body wasn't my own. Like I was an alien temporarily inhabiting it, waiting to return to the mother ship. I had spent the day with my children, Theodore and Phoebe. We went out to Lunch and finished the trip with a visit to their father.

For the first time ever, there were no tears during that visit.

Theodore, my six-foot tall Teddy bear, stood proudly next to his father's headstone. My Teddy was always the picture of Christian. They shared the same, towering frame and copper hair. The only things he inherited from me were my eyes and temperament. Phoebe, on the other hand, was the unlucky recipient of her father's mercurial moods. But, she looked like me. She had Christian's face and eyes, but everything else was me. Though, her hair was always disjointed and messy like his. I used to curse her hair every morning when she was child. I used to have to set aside a good hour to brush it and make it semi-suitable for school.

My Phoebe held onto my hand as we set some fresh flowers on Christian's new home. She giggled as we recounted his hatred of lilies. It was one of the demands he wrote into his will – no lilies, ever. When the day started to close, Teddy and Phoebe said their good-byes to their father – they promised him they would come back soon. Before I left I crouched down and lent a kiss to his headstone and said "I'll see you soon, baby."

I went to bed around eight P.M and passed sometime before the new day came. I didn't feel a thing. I just drifted away and when I opened my eyes I was outside.

I was disorientated and confused at first. It took me a few moments to realise where I was.

I was still at home. _Our big house on the Sound_.

I turned to look up at the house. I had always wondered if it would still look the same when the time came for me to leave. I smiled, blissfully. It was the same. I stood there, admiring the place I had called home for so very long. It was only when I felt a weight settling in the pit of my stomach that I looked away. I was being pulled away and toward the water. The waves were drawing me in. I had no choice but to follow its demands.

Spinning on my heel I moved to face the dock and the tall silhouette standing just before the drop.

My heart jumped for the first time in what had felt like forever. It started beating furiously in my chest, thumping harder and smashing against my ribs with every step I took. He turned to look at me just before I thrust myself on him, climbing into his chest and his waiting arms.

"Y-You're here…" I sobbed, unable to hold it in any longer. I had waited long enough. "You're really here."

His arms tightened around my back, squeezing me into his chest. He held me close and fulfilled the wish I had held onto for years. Toward the end his body wasn't kind to him. He didn't suffer much, it just failed him. He was slower on his feet than he was ten years before, but I could still sit in his lap. He would beckon me to sit with him in his office and set myself on his legs, but it wasn't the same. He couldn't hold me the way he had when we were younger. The love was still there, but not the strength.

I took in fast breathes, desperately trying to smell him. I needed to smell him again. I wept harder when it was there. It was still his smell. It was still my favourite smell.

I crushed my hands around his neck, pulling his face to mine so I could look at him. The sun was low in the sky and hampered my sight, but after a few seconds I was able to see him. I was able to see him for the first time again.

The man standing in front of me was the Christian I knew. The Christian I married. Forever twenty-eight years old.

"W-What…"

I tore my eyes from his and glanced over my body, dropping my hands from him to find them young again. The skin was smooth and fresh, not covered in fine lines and protruding veins. My body was smaller, too. So much smaller, in fact. Several sizes smaller. Everything pert and heavenly again.

"My Ana…" Christian mused, grinning, as he caressed my jaw in his hands. "I've been waiting for you."

"Y-You left me." I stuttered, struggling to calm my rapid, vintage breathing lungs. "I should've been with you… I wasn't there…"

It haunted me every second of every day that I wasn't with him when he died.

It was mid-afternoon and I was outside, in the meadow. I needed to clear the foliage from under our tree. I had been out there a while by the time he joined me. He looked fine. I didn't see anything wrong with him. He told me he was going to head upstairs and take a nap. I just nodded at him – he was always held up in his office until the early hours of the morning, so it was no surprise he would start tiring before it was time for dinner. It was almost a routine that he would go to bed for a few hours around two P.M. I smiled to him and continued with what I was doing, halted only when I felt him coil around me from behind. He slipped his hands under my busy arms and settled them on my aged, child-ruined stomach. He held my back to his chest and dropped his chin to my shoulder, and planted a small kiss to my neck. He whispered "laters, baby" to me before heading inside for the final time.

When I finally called it a day, and checked on him, he was already gone.

"I was protecting you, Ana. I didn't want you to see me leave."

"I wanted to be there… I wanted to be with you when it happened. I should've gone first. I told you I wanted to go first… I didn't want to be alone –" I broke off into a whimper. He pulled me into him, placing my head over his heart.

I felt it beat.

"I was there –" He kissed the top of my head. "I was with you, baby. I was always there with you. I never left."

"I can feel you, Christian…" I cried, pressing my fingers into the small of his back. "It's like you're really here. I can hear your heart."

"I am here. This is real, baby."

Cupping the back of my neck Christian drew my head away from his chest, wiping away the last of my tears with his thumbs.

"This is real. Just you and me, like we always said –" He smiled. "Together forever, remember?"

"Forever?" I repeated in my much higher, more nervous voice.

"Forever."

"Promise?" I begged.

I held him so tight. I was scared I'd wake up any second and this would be a dream. I've dreamt of him before. I don't want to wake up now. I don't want to be alone again.

"I promise, baby." He assured me, stooping down a little to bring his lips to mine. "Forever and a day, Ana."

I succumbed to his lips as they merged with mine, bringing warmth and passion back to my body. He kissed me with no less love than the first time our mouths met.

Christian and I sat on the deck for the rest of the evening, our legs hanging over the edge and swaying happily in the Sunset breeze.

We watched the sky darken and the stars emerge, twinkling high above us. They glittered just for us.

We didn't speak for a little while. There was so much I wanted to say to him – so much I wanted to ask him – but we have all the time in the world for that.

Our fingers locked together on his thigh. My fingers in-between the gaps of his. We just sat there, together. Just breathing the same air again. Just feeling each other again. Just being together again.


End file.
